Daniel Radcliffe understands why people keep asking him about what it’s like to film gay sex scenes with Dane DeHaan for upcoming indie “Kill Your Darlings,” and he’s not bothered by it — as long as it leads to people buying tickets for the movie.
“Somebody said to me the other day, ‘Why do you think people are talking about the gay sex scene so much?’ And I was like ‘Cause it’s an easy headline,’” Radcliffe said during a SiriusXM “Townhall” interview. “I mean, it is slightly salacious, but if that gets people to buy a ticket and they end up seeing a one-and-a-half-hour drama about the beat generation, then I’m happy with that.”
One question the “Harry Potter” star doesn’t understand, however, is whether or not his fans will be able to “cope” with the fact that he’s playing a gay man in the movie about poet Alan Ginsberg and friends. After all, he did play a young man who has a pathological religious — and sexual — fascination with horses in the 2007 West End revival of stage play “Equus.”
“I do feel like going back to all those people and be like ‘Why weren’t you more shocked about the sexual, religious worship of a horse than my character has in that?’ And…the gay sex scene in this is somehow troubling everyone suddenly,” Radcliffe said. “If they stuck with me through ‘Equus‘ they’re not going to find a problem with this. And if they are, they’re a really weird type of bigot. If they’re like ‘No, horse is fine but gay people, I can’t stand them.’”
Radcliffe also can’t stand the “ridiculous” rumors about him playing Queen singer Freddie Mercury in a biopic GK Films has in the works.
Also read: Daniel Radcliffe as Freddie Mercury? Another Casting Rumor Bites the Dust
“For a second there, I thought you were going to ask about Freddie Mercury, which is a ridiculous rumor going around,” Radcliffe said. “I was supposed to be playing him last week and I’m like, ‘No, I’m not going to be playing Freddie Mercury.’”
A project Radcliffe was happy to talk about — in great detail, too — was the upcoming “Frankenstein” adaptation, in which he co-stars as Igor alongside James McAvoy as Victor Frankenstein and Jessica Brown (“Downton Abbey”) as the female lead.
Radcliffe appeared genuinely excited about the project, and described the script from “Chronicle” writer Max Landis as “the most original script” he’s read since his days at Hogwarts.
Also read: ‘Downton Abbey’ Star Jessica Brown Findlay to Join Daniel Radcliffe in ‘Frankenstein’
“It’s not gonna be like the book. Max Landis has written the script and in a way it is kind of a Frankenstein of ‘Frankenstein,’” Radcliffe said.
“He’s taken the mythologies that we all think we know — we have this idea of a monster and a crazy scientist and kind of a hunchbacked assistant — but we don’t really know where all these parts came from,” Radcliffe said. “I think what Max has done with this is first of all he’s given Igor a backstory which you never really see before… And so, that’s I think one of the biggest differences is that you’ll finally see him granted a life and a backstory and it’s about these two young guys at the forefront of science.”
Watch Radcliffe discuss Landis’ unique take on author Mary Shelley’s classic monster tale, in the video below: